


Heartbreak

by the_blue_fairie



Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon), Tangled (2010)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:41:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25473286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_blue_fairie/pseuds/the_blue_fairie
Summary: After the events of For You, Rapunzel has time to meditate on her pain.
Relationships: Cassandra/Eugene Fitzherbert | Flynn Rider/Rapunzel, Cassandra/Rapunzel (Disney: Tangled)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 36





	Heartbreak

Rapunzel was alone in her cell.

Hands shackled together in her lap.

Head bowed.

As if in prayer.

As if sculpted stone in a cathedral – saint-head downcast, features graven.

Eyelids graven, lips graven, each curve of her face graven of marble.

But her countenance was not marble, saint-white, snow-white, man’s idealization, sightless. It was flesh, rose-flesh, with all its imperfections (all its beauties), all its fragility (all its softness), all its sin (a white-carven word whose whiteness obscured the chips in the marble, the flaws in the stone, whited-sepulcher-white, whitewashed-tomb-white.)

The tears dried upon her skin were not etched by a graver, part of a design, a mark to make the sculpted stone more beautiful. They were the remnants of her pain. Remnants of the contortions of her face, the ragged sobs, the hot tears – hot, not cold as snow-white stone…

If she were a figure, an icon, let her be an icon of wax to melt before the rows of candles, deforming – honestly showing the shape of her despair.

She was no figure that men carve for themselves in pseudo-righteousness and she thanked God for that.

_“No. Cass, no. Don’t you dare.”_

_You don’t have to do this_ , she should have said.

_You don’t have to sacrifice yourself._

Cassandra had smiled – a brittle smile.

Rapunzel hated the memory of that smile most of all.

_As if it were a better thing that she was dead._

_For me. For me. She did it for me – but I don’t want that. Cass, please… Cass…_

No one to plead with. Alone. Celled.

_There is more in you, Cassandra. More to live for… Not just for my sake – I love you I love you IloveyouandIshouldhavesaiditthen – said it then – but for yours. Did you die thinking there was less in you? Did you…_

Alone.

Blood on her lips as remembrance.

Not even a kiss from Eugene.

Eugene, who should have been with her – who Cass clearly meant to go with her, who meant to go with her himself… Cass, who should have been with her… with her…

Alone.

“Pascal?”

Pascal wasn’t there, but pretending to find him in one of the cracks in her cell helped her.

“Pascal, we’re certainly in a mess now, aren’t we?”

Her voice grew thin in the stillness.

Alone.

They brought her out to the stake – the queen who shamed the name of queen, the friend of brigands and low-lives and commoners…

Her judges were not among the common folk. Her judges were high and austere, self-made saints on their own pedestals.

They brought her and bound her to the stake. They piled the wood to burn her alive.

Cassandra had a kinship with Joan of Arc. Now Rapunzel had that too.

She thought of that as her executioner raised his torch.


End file.
